Caregiver Stress

Sometimes providing continuous care for your loved one who is experiencing the roller coaster of liver disease can cause you to experience a lot of stress, which can then lead to "burnout". To remain an effective caregiver you need to develop ways to manage the stress. Stress is not always a bad thing but can become overwhelming, keeping you from providing the care that you really want to.

Our bodies and minds are designed to deal with stress, to feel it and then react to it. You either need to react or respond to stress in a positive way. In a practical world, stress often overwhelms your capacity to deal with it, causing an inability to cope with situations that the disease causes. Too much stress not only causes mental fatigue (burnout) but also can affect you physically, interfering with your immune system and causing you to get sick.

The key to coping with stress is to identify the causes of stress in your life, then learn healthy ways to deal with them. It's important to remember that stress comes from how you respond to stressful events. Therefore, you DO have some control over stress and how it affects you! If you can't figure out what is causing stress in your life, beyond just your caregiving role, learn the warning signs of stress and then take smaller actions to address these signs. Your body sends out physical, emotional, and behavioral warning signs of caregiver stress: